Regret Waiting

Few days back I had to travel to Hyderabad to meet some of my friends, prior to a week before that I tried to book my train tickets online, there was only one available train whose timing was convenient to me, but when I checked for seats availability, the website showd me status "REGRET WAITING/1,2". I clicked on the book ticket button, it threw me an error "Regret waiting/1,2, ticket cannot be booked". I thought may there are only two tickets available so its not letting me to book them online, so decided to book the tickets from railway station itself.

Rail reservation counters in India are quire famous for thick crowd, the reservation room had five counters to book tickets, but wait!! not all were open, only two were issuing tickets. No clue about the rest three. So the queue at those two counters was too huge. I went n stood in the queue which looked shorter among the two. The time for issuing a ticket/person was almost 10 minutes, n tats damn slow. I went to the station in the morning around 9 A.M to avoid any long queue's, but later realised it was a bad guess. It took almost two hours for my turn, and Just when the guy infront of me wast about to clear the counter, one lady came in between n submitted her reservation form at the counter, I said wait Ma'm u need to come in the queue, for that she replied for women there is no need to be in the queue and showed me a notice board besides. It was a small notice board, when I gazed at it carefully it read "This queue is meant for general purpose, but for senior citizens and womens there is no need to stand in the queue".

Meanwhile some of the guys who had lined up behind me in the queue went insane, raising how can she book the ticket without standing in the queue, some ppl even shouted at me for not stopping her. I said boss there is a board here which says a women can book her ticket without being in the queue. The quarrel between the women and those guys kindled, soon some more women who were back in the queue joined her, the quarrel went on for almost 10 minutes and finally halted with a compromise, that all women will form a new queue and the tickets will be booked alternatively by men and women. So It took almost half-hour more for my turn to come. I gave my reservation form at the counter and was waiting to receive my ticket, n guess what??????...the lady issuing tickets said "The train is fully booked on the date requested by you, we cant book a ticket even with 'Waiting' status". Wow!! wat a grt reward for standing in this queue for almost 2 n half hour. I asked her to check for alternatives, she said "No". I pressed her again to check, she checked again n said "I can book tatkal ticket, for which you will have to pay an extra 150 Rs as tatkal fee but the ticket will be in waiting status ", which means till the date of journey if tickets staus gets cleared only then i can travel, otherwise I can cancel the ticket where 25% of the total amount will be fined. I didnt have much time to decide so told her to book tatkal ticket.

Almost 5 days had left for my travel, every day, in the morning, noon, evening i used to check my tickets status in the rail website. Even the day before my travel I checked for status, but status was hell, it showed me "Waiting" all the time. If status remained same even the next day then I had to cancel my trip, which I didnt wanted. So I started lookin for alternatives, all other trains for that day were booked, travel by air is toooo costly, by bus its too enervating as it was almost 14 hours journey. But I had to travel, so I decided to go by bus, n got a ticket for some private bus travel.

On the day of my travel after finishing my packing, I went to railway station to cancel my train ticket to get atleast 75% of its money back. Again there was a long queue and again after loooong time my turn came. I surrendered my ticket at the counter and told the lady officer to cancel it, she took the ticket, cheked its status and said "Sir your ticket is confirmed, and we dont cancel it once confirmed". GOSSSSH!!! dont tell me.....man!!! first time after waiting for 2 hrs in this queue i wanted reserved ticket they gave me a waiting one, next time again after waiting for so long, i wanted to cancel the ticket they give me reserved one..but tats fate. Now I have two tickets..I thought for a while and decided to travel by train coz its more comfortable and cancel the bus ticket. I called the bus agency n told them to cancel my ticket, they said they dont cancel the ticket once it is issued, dude!!! wat do u mean..had a heated argument with them..told them my 1000 Rs at stake so give me atleast 50% amount back, they again denied. I went to their office n told the whole story, but no avail. I asked them to give me their boss telephone no, I called their boss n recounted the whole account, finally after a brief talk the boss agreed but said I will be charged 25% of the amout for cancellation, I said no problem coz even after that I will get back 750 Rs, n tats huge amount. All clear..there was big sigh..I collected my money, came back home, took my luggage n AGAIN headed towards the railway station......
but this time to catch my train.. ;-))